Three Things a Travel Nurse Gives Up

The first thing you realize you are sacrificing when taking on the travel lifestyle is the roots you have placed down. They may be family, friends, or more, but you know everything in your past is changed when you leave them behind.

Not everyone may consider this a sacrifice and short trips home may suffice for a time, but know this; what once held you to stay in a particular location will either lose its hold on you, or draw you back.

Online video calls such as Skype have helped keep in touch, as well as social networks have been a great means of staying in touch, but the presence of being there is just not the same, so consider this strongly before taking to a life on the road.

The second thing you give up is familiarity. This might not seem too important at first but after a while it can be a major stressor, especially in large urban assignments.

Quick, ask me my local address; I couldn't tell you. What is my most recent area code; again no idea. I have learned to keep this info updated on my cell phone ID, otherwise I would have no idea when asked.

Same thing goes for driving, even with a GPS it is not infrequent to miss a turn and find the next exit. How many times have I heard the GPS say "Recalculating"; I couldn't answer.

Working at the hospital is grueling the first week, as nursing practice is mostly the same where ever you go, but charting systems are different, and learning where supplies are can be challenging. Remember back in nursing school the first thing we learned before beginning any procedure was to gather all supplies? Well that isn't so easy when you can't find the supplies.

You might be wondering at this point if I am sharing this to discourage travel. Not at all, rather to prepare you for what the life is really like and to encourage anyone interested in travel to embrace the idea of feeling lost as but a new adventure. After working on so many floors it becomes like a game. You know the dressing cart is some where on the floor, its just a matter of where they might have put it.

Travel may require a third thing to give up as well, and that is a life in pursuit of possessions, a life I am all to willing to give up, but others may not. Moving every thirteen weeks simply doesn't allow for the accumulation of many material goods as the cost of transporting them becomes too prohibitive.

Those who prefer to build a home and lay down roots also choose to accumulate in order to create comfort, convenience, and security, while those living a life of travel value time, experience, and mobility.

Each time Mary and I have stayed for an extended time and then moved we end up giving away items we have collected, sometimes vast amounts of accumulated beach glass, other times a bike, and lots of unused food. Still, before any purchase we always consider if it is something worth exchanging travel space for and how long will it serve our purpose.

Having conversations with those who do not travel will cause me to consider how differently I now view these things; roots, familiarity, and possessions. Not that either one of us is right and the other wrong, but it becomes clear that there is different views to the same subjects and often times those who choose to stay home, just don't "get" my choices.

That is what makes me a travel nurse.

The Paperwork.

Every now and then I receive an email from Christa, a service tech that works at my agency's office. I dread seeing her emails. The reason isn't that I don't like her, she is very sweet on the phone, but its her message. I open the latests; "A new requirement is soon to expire...", it says; just like all of them. This time I need to take a drug screen test, soon my yearly physical will be required as well.

In an attempt to stay JACOH compliant there is a litany of paper work and testing required above and beyond what is also required by the hospital that a traveler is assigned to. For those who choose to work with more than one agency at a time, something quite advisable at times, the same requirements will have to be done for each. I must admit there have been times I stayed with the same agency just to avoid filling out all the paperwork. A move that might have cost me more money in the long run, but that just gives you an idea how much I dislike it.

If you are thinking of working with more than one agency in the near future, it might be wise to start in plenty of advance time before your next move in order to break up the amount of cram time necessary to choosing your next assignment, for surely the facility will require more papers and orientation work as well, and its easy to get burned out with the lot. The week of and following your move can be exhausting, so preparation time in advance will be well spent.

I met a fellow traveler who had most all of his paper work, put in pdf formated files, that way he could easily send them to any interesting agency. If I was that tech savvy I would do the same, but since not, I have all my documents scanned and in a Word file for easy emailing. Going through the process once is difficult enough, making it easier the next time is a mind saver.

I would assume that most travelers keep their documentation in some kind of folder or case, and be sure to keep that in the car trunk the first week of orientation. I remember a woman being told not to return to orientation until she brought her ACLS card with her, which unfortunately was left in another state.

A recent assignment required on line orientation, which I was unable to begin until arriving at the local hotel that same week of orientation, the hotel had advertised wi-fi so I thought everything would go well. Instead I learned that wi-fi and hi-speed internet meant two completely different things, as the carrier was crawled through the video programs at a snails pace and what should have taken six hours turned into a disaster of an all-nighter.

The lesson from this post would be that the transition from one assignment to another has plenty of hidden perils, therefore take care of the easy things well in advance as much as possible in order to deal with what ever may happen.

Hope your travels all go well!

Our New Home

The weather in Sacramento is more tempermental than other parts of California. In San Diego you could pretty much count on every day to be wonderfully warm, but not so much in the Sac valley, as they call it.

We chose to stay in the area another three months, even though the original plan was to make an extended road trip back to the Ozarks and combine working on the rental properties with welcoming our new grand baby as well as attend my oldest daughter's wedding. Some misfortunes in our finances however changed all that, and the prospect of no income for two or more months did not appear so appealing.

The hospital in Sacramento is actually quite nice to work in, though I met several travelers who would disagree with this. I found many of their complaints unfounded, or at least misleading however, as the nature of healthcare delivery is changing nationwide and not just this one facility, and so the complaints they had will be found at other facilities as well.

Our original intent was to find a simple place to live while here and try to save some money back, but now that we are staying the plan has changed somewhat and we have found a nicer home to live in. Much nicer.

Yes, it comes with a higher price tag, but considering we were planning on foregoing at least two months of income we are still coming out way ahead. The move will certainly make our stay here more pleasurable. The hardest part of staying was not arriving in the Ozarks. The disappointment for both Mary and I as well as the family hoping to see us. We have at least scheduled a week's visit, but its just not the same.

So one hard lesson I am taking from this is that making plans with our lifestyle is difficult. Best made plans, like everything else in life are subject to change, nothing is really set in stone, and learning to roll with the bumps in life is a valuable trait to have.

So go ahead; ask me where I am going next.

My response; "I am going to have fun."

Top 10 Travel Career Must-Do Checklist - Travel Nursing

Top 10 Travel Career Must-Do Checklist - Travel Nursing

Interesting post by Melissa Wirkus, and posted at travelnursing.com. Lots of good information out there.

Changing Plans

The phone rings; it is Carol, Mary's friend in Washington state. We hope to visit them this summer on our way to Hawaii. Carol and her husband have a large home and plenty of room to put us up while I work a contract in the area.

While Mary is on the phone, I am preparing for our bike ride on one of the many trails in Sacramento California. I look for the bike rack but can't find it anywhere. "Where is the rack?" I ask.

Mary pulls the phone from her face, "In your closet, where it always is." she says.

Anything I can't find is supposedly in my closet. I take a look. It's not there.

Meanwhile Mary continues her conversation; turns out Carol's husband is taking a job out of state so they probably won't be in Washington after all. That changes everything as the whole point in working in Washington was to spend time with them, now plans are completely open creating a whole basket of options.

I interrupt Mary again, "It's not there", I say.

Mary continues her conversation keeping the phone against her face as she walks into the bedroom, steps into my closet and points to the bike rack sitting in the corner.

"How come everything is always in my closet," I protest, "no wonder I can't find anything".

While I hook the rack on the back of the car I consider some our options; we could go to Maine or Vermont this summer, returning briefly to Missouri on our way to Hawaii. Another idea is keep the plan for Washington anyway. Either way, the options are limited only by our imagination and willingness to accept the possibilities.

In one sense it felt comforting when we had our plans all set. Now our sense of adventure is once again heightened, the whole country is our playground.

I approach the bikes and squeeze on the tires. They need air. I turn around call out, "Honey, where is the air pump?"

Mastering the U-Turn

Several years ago four of us guys climbed in a SUV for an evening road trip to St. Louis for a Cardinals baseball game. The plan was to park the SUV near a pub that I had visited before with a friend named Allison and ride the trolley to the park, and while the trip to St. Louis was uneventful, locating the pub was a bit of a problem.

After searching for some time, and losing our way in a myriad of downtown oneway streets, I called Allison and put her on speaker phone hoping she might help, but to no avail.

Finally she says, " Why don't you guys just stop and ask someone?"

There was a momentary silence, then a burst of laughter erupted and gufaws from the four of us in the SUV.

"What's so funny?" Allison asks.

"There's four guys in a SUV, and you think we are gonna stop and ask for directions?" I ask incredulously at the mere suggestion.

Again, another roar of laughter.

Since then, it still never occurs to me to ask for directions; but I do make a point of either mapping out my trip and use a GPS, yet I have still found the use of the U-turn a great tool. In fact, I cannot over-rate the usefullness of the U-turn; a skill frequent travelers must master in order to navigate through life's turns and missed directions.

Rules to mastering the U-turn.

Of course the first thing to consider making the U-turn is recognizing that you are indeed going the wrong direction. Here is an important note; making U-turns before your certain you are going the wrong direction will only confuse the situation more. Therefore, be certain that the direction you a have taken is truly moving you further away from your goal.

Before engaging in the U-turn keep safety in mind. Be on the lookout in all directions before initiating your manuaver; is there sufficient room for turn, be sure there is no one coming the other direction to avoid head on collision. In other words, make sure you aren't going to hurt anyone when you change course.

Make your U-turn quickly. Nothing worse than doing a U-turn in slow motion for everyone to gawk at and be the laughing stock on the road. No need for long apologies, partial turns, or creation of a commotion, just remember avoid impeding the flow of traffic for others who do happen to know where they are going.

I must admit having not always followed all of the above advice and on occasion made so many U-turns I could have been performing figure eights, though these days I try to make a clear and straight course.

Leaving San Diego

So here is a brief rundown of my last few weeks leaving one assignment for another. The plan was to move from San Diego to Sacramento but the timing was lousy as I had hoped for a little bit of time to allow getting set up and find a place to live. Instead, I finish working four nights in a row, sleep for a few hours on Wednesday morning, and take off for the 500 mile drive in order to get to Sacramento for an orientation that Saturday and start work Monday.

Bothersome emails kept arriving from the agency for such requirements as TB mask fitting verification. “Where am I supposed to find that?” I ask.
“Perhaps you can ask your current hospital for one”, I am told.

Now when am I supposed to include this in my schedule of work, sleep, and driving 500 miles I wonder, but decide it is worth the time stopping by the human resource office as I am driving out of town just in case. They had it! What luck was that?

After faxing a copy to the agency clerk, she then informs me that the chest x-ray I had taken three years ago is no longer valid and must be retaken prior to starting orientation, so if I could just swing by my local physician that would be great.

“Oh, yeah, my local physician is 1,000 miles away; I’ll just give him a ring” I scream at my email while embarking on the drive north. I call the clerk and using the most polite and professional voice I can muster explain my ordeal, and she agrees to email suggestions for clinics in Sacramento for when I arrive; which doesn’t happen until around 1:00 AM after an eleven hour drive. Mary has the room already taken care of as she flew up ahead of me.

The next day I locate a clinic which agrees to take the x-ray and we spend the next two days locating our new home, except I also have over 12 hours of online orientation to fit in while using the slowest internet connection since the old phone dialup I used over ten years ago, lesson I learned here is that hotel wi-fi does not mean high speed; the online orientation took more like 16 hours.

Locating proved to be more difficult in Sacramento than our previous experiences, but we ended up with a nice two bedroom, two bath apartment that was exactly within the price range we were looking for. Craigslist was again our best tool, but patience was needed this time round. During the interim we stayed at a location that offered small one bedroom cottages that could be rented by the week and offered significant savings over a hotel.

Ten days after the moving adventure began, things are back to normal again, or as much as normal gets to be in our life, and we are ready to explore our new location.